


Filaments

by Innin



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Halls of Mandos, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 23:38:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5069281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innin/pseuds/Innin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even in the Halls of Mandos, Míriel remains connected to her son - and he to her, shaping key events.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Filaments

**Author's Note:**

  * For [uumuu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/gifts).



Glints of light fell onto Finwë's hair, kindling in the strands that lay fanned out over Míriel's lap and the silvery sand. Some ends of it, stirred aside by a breath of wind, reached almost to the waterline, where the sea rolled gently in and out.

"Do you ever ponder if there is another way across than just being ferried on an island?" asked Míriel, gazing out away from the light through Calacirya into the shadows of the sea, dimming into purples and then the same blue-blacks as the reflexes of light on her husband's hair. 

"I suppose there must be," said Finwë, his voice relaxed and rumbling softly. "The Telerin vessels explored the waters far beyond Eressëa when they still dwelled there; if they had provisions enough I believe they could make the crossing despite the distance. I have heard said that the sea is narrower in the North, also. That would be a sure distance for a crossing, I daresay - Olwë and Alpanellë will know a better answer. Let us ask them when it is time to go back." 

Míriel hummed. Her fingers were the only thing about her not at that moment at rest, weaving knots and nets into Finwë's hair until he shifted his head aside to kiss her stomach, looking at her with hopeful eyes until their idle musings were forgotten and she laughed. "Oh, very well. But let none say that the king and queen dawdled away their time in Alqualondë with lovemaking on the beach when they were here to congratulate the Teleri on the completion of their towns." 

* * * 

She only dimly remembered that day after her death, although it remained with her among the overflow of memories that she clutched in her tired hands like string, trailing after her from the walls and ceilings adorned by tapestries, and she gathered more the more of them unravelled, scenes of her life that made her wonder if this was punishment, or simply Mandos doing as she had pleaded with him, sending her into un-being, releasing her from weariness, and it was her who yet clung to existence. 

All the same, she could not let them go.

She took the unravelled tapestries with her to the place of sanctuary she'd willed herself within the Halls. There would be delight to be had, otherwise, in the malleability of the place, the way the environment shifted to accommodate her wishes, sometimes conscious and sometimes not. The only thing she couldn't will into being in this place of mind and spirit were physical, material possessions, like the loom and shuttle she yearned for desperately to solve the disarray of threads between her fingers and spilling over her feet, yarn trailing after her like the train of a dress.

When she could, she'd restore them to a semblance of order, whorls and webs of the events she thought belonged together. Her abode began to resemble a spider's lair, but she felt more comfortable when order returned, save for a particular string she couldn't place - wrapped around and through her like lace in red and gold most of all, mingled with thin strands blue and yellow and white, that she could not unravel and that made her fingers slip as though they were clumsy, with none of the fineness they'd had in life. She could only follow until she found the tapestry of origin. 

It was a diptych: The day on the beach that had been Fëanáro's conception, and a blur of colours that connected the peaceful scene to a year later, the pangs of his birth. In the tapestry he looked to be already burning, and she lay on her bed, attended by Estë's maidens, as pale and colourless as a moth. When she jerked on the string in her haste to get away, the infant seemed to _move_ , to still his wailing and to turn his head and look directly at her, then past her shoulder down the long gallery she'd found herself in. Where the thread connected to the tapestry, it became his umbilical cord, not yet cut.

Her heart would race, if she still had one. For all her love for her son, she wished the thread away and it would not go. It put her in mind of spider-silk, but stronger still. Had she still had blood, she would have torn her fingers trying to rip the thread from her middle, and might have broken her teeth trying to gnaw through it. She could not, no more than a spider might tear out its spinneret.

She fled back into her sanctuary and sought out the most lightless corner, and the Valar, who came beseeching her to return, or Niënna who merely stood and watched her with pools of tears gathering at her feet, speaking at times of the Sundering between her and Finwë - she sent them away and remained in the dark, sorting her threads and let time pass, if time passed in Mandos - until a powerful tug drew her out of her hiding place, almost by physical force, if that held any sway in Mandos. 

* * *

She was drawn, again, into that corridor. The infant Fëanáro had stilled again except for his eyes, which she thought followed her every movement, but she soon resolved to go on regardless of the nausea she'd have felt, had she still had a body to convey that feeling - and even that soon faded, making way to wonder: 

There were more and more and more tapestries of Fëanáro. He was always alight, and always coming alive to her touch - and, she discovered, to her command. He went to the girl Nerdanel when she nudged him standing with a sharp-edged brooch clutched in his palm, with a silver ring, and then a golden. The thread unspooled further toward the feast held in honour of their union, and she wept seeing Indis at Finwë's side - relief, there, and no little, for she'd seen both Fëanáro and Finwë grieve, and wished again she weren't so tired that another must take her place, a friend though Indis had been to her in life. For once, the impulse through her was not to vanish, to die entirely, but to return. The more she saw, the more she understood her son in more than an abstract mother's duty, and it became more and more impossible not to dote upon him, to watch closely all that occured in his life - the brilliant, bright spirit in him could not be resisted, nor did she want to.

And the thread held her fast, and spun on. Fëanáro founded a family of his own, his quarrels, successes, his piercing-bright gems, until, drastically, the hues and lightness of the tapestries shifted, the gold grew dull and the white became tarnished grey, then entirely dark as the Trees died - a plunge into blue-black interspersed with the glow of flame. Her cord had never shone such bright red. There came a shudder and a deep groan through the entirety of the Halls when she reached this new section, as though the light had vanished into the vile spider's maw just then, as though it were their husband who lay slain and unkinged in his northern exile.

At last she came to an empty frame loom that began shaping by invisible hands as she stood and watched the creation of a new tapestry. 

More darkness, more flames. She felt the colour more than just remembering it; indeed the thread seemed to draw it from her very core and into the picture shaping itself before her eyes like ink on a blank page - the blue-black that the sea had had far, far out on the day with Finwë, and now - Fëanáro encamped before it in the Dark. His body loomed a large silhouette in flame on a rise above the coast. Had she had a mouth, it would have gone dry. She thought she could see the sheltered spot between two large rocks where she and Finwë had made love that day in the background of the scene, but Fëanáro was moving restlessly and his gaze was bent away from that, and from her, onto the harbour and the swan-vessels at anchor inside the vaulting arch of living rock that marked Alqualondë's harbour gate. 

None of the other tapestries in the corridor had been a memory, a recollection - at least none belonging to her, for the simple reason that she had not been present when the events unspooled in life, but neither had there been the sudden terrible urgency and the raw grief radiating from her center seeing the scene before her, and she clutched at the cord emanating from her.

Fëanáro stirred, and turned to look at her, and Míriel understood the longing. Words poured from her - or they would have, had she had a mouth to speak them. Yet, her son seemed to understand.

"There is a way across. There is. Your father said long ago that there was, northward via ship."

There was no sound when he turned his head, only the glint of his piercing eyes in their terrifying, beloved familiarity, the movement of his lips. "I must go; I swore. Help me, oh Mother, if you can. Make me a way, give me a ship where the Teleri have proved faithless in the hour of my need."

She wept - or would have, had she had tears. Fëanáro's eyes were gleaming. "Have I not always upheld the honour of your memory, have I not always defended you against those who would sully your wishes with their sá-sí? Would you not repay me, do you not love me? Help me."

There was the physical tug again - painful and angry this time, into her middle. Somewhere back in her hideaway there were memories of friendship and laughter with Olwë and Alpanellë, and the sense of betrayal on her son's behalf was so acute that she wished she could fly back and tear them up, all the aquamarine and silver of it - but first she knew what she must do. It would shorten the cord that bound her and her son, draw them closer together, him to death and her to life, the opposite of what either of them wanted, but there was red aplenty in the filaments, enough to turn all of Alqualondë into blood and swords in the torchlight.

Seizing the frame, Míriel set to work.


End file.
